Bazhe - Georgian nut sauce. Bazhe - nut sauce of Georgian cuisine Kbzhu and composition for the whole dish

To make the classic bazhe sauce, you will need a short list of ingredients. The basis of the dish is walnuts - take a glass with a good pile of peeled kernels to get a rich taste. You also cannot do without garlic and spices, which Georgian cuisine loves very much. Utskho-suneli, Imeretian saffron, coriander, red and black pepper will give the sauce a recognizable taste and aroma. To add the missing sourness and better reveal the aroma of the seasoning, you will need an acid - lemon juice or white wine vinegar will do. We will bring the sauce to the desired thickness by adding water, so do not forget to boil a couple of glasses in advance and cool to room temperature.

Bazhe's secrets

If you ask a Georgian housewife what is most important in preparing bazhe, she will tell you that you need the right ingredients and strong hands. Nuts, garlic and seasonings need to be thoroughly ground to a paste, so the main thing is to be patient and use a mortar. You can make the task easier by using a meat grinder or blender, but you will still have to work with your hands.

It is very important to buy the “right” nuts. The kernels should not be bitter. Choose light colors, then the seasoning, as expected, will be colored in light nut tones. The kernels should be filled with juice, selected, and not dried out and shriveled, then they will turn out to be a good fatty paste, which means that the kernels will be tasty.

Among the seasonings, coriander, utskho-suneli, Imeretian saffron (marigolds), and hot pepper are usually added to Georgian bazhe. However, in different regions of the country the proportions and set of spices may change, and if we add to this the personal preferences of each housewife, then there are countless options for the sauce, but the cooking principle is the same for everyone - grind and dilute with water. Shall we get started?

Total cooking time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 10 minutes
Yield: 300-400 ml

Ingredients

shelled walnuts – 1 tbsp. (100 g)
garlic – 3 large cloves
coriander seeds – 1/2 tsp.
utskho-suneli – 1/2 tsp.
Imeretian saffron – 1/2 tsp.
salt – 1/2 tsp.
hot red pepper – 1/3 tsp.
black pepper – 1-2 chips.
lemon juice – 1 tbsp. l.
boiled water – 100-200 ml

Preparation

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Let's start with nuts. They need to be sorted out so that shell fragments do not come across.

The nuts need to be ground to a paste. To make your task easier, you can use a meat grinder or blender. The ground nuts should turn into a homogeneous mixture, fine-grained, without large pieces. It’s best to run it through a meat grinder twice, but a powerful blender with a knife attachment does the job faster, in 2-3 minutes.

I peeled the garlic, put it through a press and put it in a mortar. Salt and all the seasonings were poured there: coriander seeds, utskho-suneli, saffron, red and black pepper. I carefully ground the spices and garlic in a mortar.

Then, 1-2 spoonfuls at a time, poured ground nuts into the mortar, grinding them with a pestle to a paste.

You should get an almost homogeneous mass. If the nuts are of good quality, the mixture will be oily and will release nut oil. Pour the resulting paste into a bowl. Add acid - I used freshly squeezed lemon juice, which can be replaced with white wine vinegar.

The mass turns out to be very thick, so it needs to be diluted with cold boiled water. Add a little at a time, literally 1 spoon at a time, thoroughly stirring the contents of the bowl. You need to add enough liquid so that the sauce has the consistency of liquid sour cream. You can make it a little thicker or thinner, but it shouldn't flow like water.

As a rule, nut sauce is served with chicken or fish, eggplant and cabbage dishes. Bazhe is placed on the table in a bowl or in a gravy boat. The sauce is poured over the dish, dipped in gomi or eaten with mchadi. It tastes hot and spicy, with a pronounced nutty taste and garlic aroma.

If you dilute it not very carefully, but choose a thick consistency, it will turn out like in the next photo. For everyone and at will. Bon appetit and delicious culinary experiments!

Chicken in bazhe (satsivi)

In front of you satsivi recipe, tested by time and festive events in Georgia. My mother cooked for the blog.

A little about terminology

Chicken in a bag - in Georgia they prefer to call this dish this way (as opposed to satsivi, in which the nuts are not brewed, but boiled - this recipe will appear on the site soon). However, if you tried it in a Russian Georgian cafe or restaurant, 90% of the time you ate a dish prepared approximately according to this recipe.

Ingredients

What you need to prepare satsivi for a large pan:

turkey or chicken - 2 kg
peeled walnuts - 0.5 kg
garlic - 7 cloves
real spicy adjika (without tomatoes, without starch and other rubbish) - 3 heaped teaspoons
satsivny seasoning (or ground coriander + utskho-suneli one to one) - 2 teaspoons
Imeretian saffron (ground, powdered) - 1 teaspoon
salt to taste

1. Selection of walnuts

Walnuts should not be brown, but light (as in the photo), not shriveled, but filled with juice. In Russia, such nuts can usually be bought at the market, but not in the store.

2. Roast chicken

It is believed that turkey should be used for canonical satsivi. Canonicity always has limits - the turkey, a bird brought to Eurasia from America. Therefore, we use chicken without a twinge of conscience.
It is necessary to fry the chicken pieces so that a rough crust does not form. Better - in the oven.

3. Chopping nuts

While the chicken is roasting, it's time to get started on the nuts. To create nut butter, use a meat grinder or blender. The main task is to create a walnut paste that is as fine-grained as possible, without large pieces. If the effect is not achieved after the first grinding, repeat the procedure. After the nuts are chopped, you need to prepare the nut butter.

4. Preparation of nut butter for satsivi

Take 3 heaping tablespoons of chopped walnuts, 7 cloves of garlic and 1 heaping teaspoon of adjika and grind these ingredients three times through a fine meat grinder. Take the resulting mass in your palm and squeeze out the liquid (oil) into a separate container. Scroll the remaining cake through the meat grinder two more times and squeeze out the oil again, and also collect the oil that has leaked out of the meat grinder. Place the remaining lump of walnuts, adjika and garlic in a container with ground nuts.

Obtaining nut butter - third turning through a meat grinder
The resulting oil will be used later, but for now you need to dilute the nut mass in water.

5. Diluting the nut mass in boiling water

Satsivi is made with water or light broth. Fundamentally, these two satsivi recipes do not differ - neither in the preparation technology, nor in the end result.

First you need to dilute boiling water (!) the cake obtained during the preparation of nut butter. In a separate container, add half a glass of boiling water to the cake and stir thoroughly so that there are no lumps left. (In boiling water, the nut mass miraculously changes its color from yellow-brown to a milky color with a coffee tint). When done, combine the resulting mass with chopped nuts and continue pouring boiling water: pour glasses (200 ml) into the nut mass and stir thoroughly - you will need another 3.5 glasses of boiling water (not counting 0.5 glasses for the cake).

The result should be a sauce similar in thickness to kefir. (Later the satsivi will thicken to the consistency of yogurt).

When you have obtained a homogeneous thick liquid, you can start adding seasonings.

6. Preparing seasonings

Take 1 teaspoon of Imeretian saffron, 2 teaspoons of satsiv seasoning (or ground coriander + utskho-suneli one to one) and 2 teaspoons of adjika and stir them in boiling water in a separate container.

7. Mixing the main ingredients

Pour the seasoning mixture obtained at the previous stage into the nut sauce (the color of the dish will turn yellow), add salt to taste and place. Toss chicken in seasoned peanut sauce.

8. Upholding satsivi

Satsivi must still stand - no less 4 hours until the peanut sauce has thickened and the chicken has soaked through. Do not put the satsivi in the refrigerator until it has cooled completely, as the water may separate from the nuts! Before serving, add nut butter to the dish.

Store satsivi in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.

It was Satsivi recipe

Fundamentally, satsivi differs from bazhi (in the nominative case, either bazhe or bazha) in that in the case of satsivi, the nut sauce boil, and in the case of a bag - brew boiling water (water or broth). Wine vinegar (some people also add to baja) and onions are also added to satsivi.

Satsivi recipes can differ noticeably from each other in ingredients; some of them contain exotic ingredients that are not typical of the nature and agriculture of Georgia, such as cloves (comes from the tropical Moluccas Islands/Indonesia) and cinnamon (from Sri Lanka), however , these are also today's realities.

Today, bazhey in Tbilisi restaurants usually refers not to a dish of poultry and nuts, but to a sauce made from nuts, mentioned in some cookbooks of the mid-20th century under the name satsebeli. In Georgian restaurants and cafes in Russia, bazha is often served under the name satsivi.

The significant fact is that Bazha comes from Western Georgia, I think, even more specifically Samegrelo. In the same region, the version of satsivi (boiled nuts + acidifier) is called kharcho (not to be confused with kharcho soup).
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In Georgia they know how to make any dish taste extraordinary. There is no secret, say restaurateurs and housewives. It's all about the sauces. Everyone knows their names, and the recipes are carefully preserved.

An additional advantage of the dish is the ability to prepare the sauce for future use and serve it piquantly for any feast. Let's get started!

Easy and tasty: tsitsibeli

Tsitsibeli becomes an indispensable seasoning for meat in winter. This sauce is spicy, like many Georgian dishes. To cook it, you will need tomatoes. You should also stock up on pepper. You will need sweet bell peppers, and bitter peppers will add spiciness to the dish.

Recipe

For cooking you will need enamel dishes: a wide bowl or pan.

Ingredients

Tomatoes – 1 kg.
Pepper: sweet – 500 g, bitter capsicum – 300 g.
Garlic – 0.5 kg.
Salt is added to taste. For winter storage, you need to add at least a tablespoon.

TIP: carefully select vegetables for preparing tsitsibel. Give preference to juicy, fleshy tomatoes and fully ripe peppers.

Preparation

The ingredients are washed properly. Tomatoes are cut into large pieces. The seeds are removed from the pepper. The stinging cloves cleanse.
Vegetables are chopped in a meat grinder.
The resulting vegetable mixture is salted and mixed.
The dishes are filled with grated vegetables, placed on low heat, and brought to a boil. It is important to stir the contents of the bowl all the time with a wooden spatula so that it does not burn.
After boiling, remove the container from the heat and place it in prepared jars (washed and sterilized).

Spicy tomato

Spicy tomato sauce is traditional for Georgian cuisine.

Cooking recipe

Tomatoes – 5 kg.
Hot pepper: fresh hot pepper – 750 g, ground red – 25 g.
Garlic – 150 – 175 g.
Salt – 2.5 tbsp.
Green cilantro – 2.5 tbsp.
Wine vinegar – 2.5 tbsp.
Water – 0.5 l.

TIP: You can use dry coriander instead of fresh cilantro.

Cooking method

The washed tomatoes are cut into large pieces, placed in a pan, and water is poured.
Boil the tomatoes over low heat, covered, for about 0.5 hours.
Fresh hot peppers and garlic are ground in a meat grinder.
If using fresh cilantro, chop it as finely as possible.
Place the chopped ingredients in a bowl and add ground pepper. Vinegar is poured there. Mix everything, pour in salt, and mix thoroughly again.
The tomatoes are removed from the pan and passed through a colander to separate the tomato juice.
The remaining tomato pulp is chopped with a blender.
Place the ground ingredients and vinegar there. Using a blender, combine everything into a uniform mass.
The pan is filled with the collected juice, and the crushed mass is laid out.
Cook over low heat. Cooking time – 50 minutes. The mass must be stirred all the time.

This recipe allows you to eat the prepared seasoning right away.

You can store the workpiece in the refrigerator. To do this, the cooled seasoning is placed in jars.

If the workpiece will be stored without a refrigerator, it is poured into jars or bottles with a wide neck without cooling! Fill the prepared container with boiling sauce, leaving no free space in it. Plastic lids are pre-prepared: they are washed, doused with boiling water, and dried. Cover the jars or bottles with lids and leave them in a cool room.

Satsivi

You should definitely prepare a sauce with an original nutty taste - delicious satsivi, which in Georgia is offered as a gravy for chicken or meat.

Products that are included in Satsivi:

Walnut – 0.3 kg.
Broth (chicken) – 400 ml.
Chicken fat – 30 g.
Onions – 160 g.
Garlic – 6 cloves.
Cilantro - a bunch.
Lemon - one.
Wheat flour - a tablespoon.
Georgian seasonings: hops-suneli – 14 g, saffron – 6 g.
Use salt, sugar and pepper to taste.

Traditional recipe for cooking satsivi

Peeled garlic is finely chopped. Cover with salt and grind.
Nuts are prepared in the same way: the kernels, washed in warm water, are cut and ground.

TIP: Georgians traditionally use mortars to grind garlic and nuts. If you don't have one, you can use a more conventional method - a blender.

The cilantro leaves are separated from the stems and finely chopped. Satsivi may also include parsley. It is used in equal proportions with cilantro. You can cook satsivi only with parsley.
Finely chop the onion head.
For cooking you will need a frying pan or saucepan. The fat is melted in them, and a little broth is poured in to sauté the onions.
When it becomes transparent, add flour and continue frying until light creamy, stirring all the time.
Carefully pour the remaining broth there and dilute everything with saffron. Mix everything to get a homogeneous mixture without lumps. Bring to a boil over low heat, boil for 6-7 minutes and remove from heat.
Squeeze the lemon and pour the strained juice into the saucepan.
Add ground products, herbs, suneli hops, salt, sugar - to taste.
Over low heat, stirring, bring to a boil. No need to boil! Immediately remove the dishes from the heat.

Satsivi can be eaten not only with chicken. It is perfect for eggplants, fish, and also for boiled meat, beef or veal.

Garo

Nuts are part of another sauce - garo, the recipe for which will help you prepare the dish at home for the winter.

Walnut – 0.2 kg.
Chicken broth – 2 tbsp.
Onion – 2 pcs.
Garlic – 3-4 cloves.
Wine vinegar - ¼ tbsp.
Chicken yolk – 2 pcs.
Cilantro – 2 tbsp.
Salt to taste.

Spicy sauce recipe

Grind garlic, nuts, and cilantro in a mortar or blender.
Grind everything with salt.
Place the crushed ingredients in a bowl, pour vinegar into it, and stir.
Gradually pour chicken broth into the bowl. Stir to obtain a homogeneous mixture.
Add onions.
Place the bowl over low heat, bring to a boil and cook for 10 minutes. During cooking, the sauce must be stirred all the time.
Pour 2 tablespoons of the mixture into a separate bowl and cool.
Beat the yolks, combine with two tablespoons of cooled sauce, and continue beating until smooth.
Whipped egg whites are poured into the warm mixture. Be careful to prevent the whites from curdling.

Mix the garo thoroughly and it is ready!

Tkemali

It is impossible to imagine the sauces of Georgian cuisine without the famous tkemali, which is easy to prepare at home! The recipe got its name from the small plums of the same name.

Ingredients

The recipe is given per kilogram of tkemali.

Garlic – 1 head (medium or large).
Greens: 1 bunch each of basil, dill or cilantro.
Ground red pepper – from 0.5 to 1 tsp.
Salt – 1 tbsp.
Water – 0.5 tbsp.

TIP: leaving the main components of the tkemali recipe unchanged, use all seasonings to taste.

Cooking method

The plums are washed, dried, and placed in a pan. Add water and cook for 10 minutes. You can diversify the recipe with cherry plum or red currant.
The washed greens are finely chopped or crushed in a blender.
Garlic cloves are crushed.
The plums are taken out of the pan. Do not throw away the broth!
Boiled tkemali are ground through a sieve, separating the bones.
The resulting plum puree should have the consistency of liquid sour cream. If it is thicker, dilute it little by little with the broth and stir thoroughly.
Add garlic and herbs.
Bring to a boil and cool.

Tkemali is ready for the meat plate! All that’s left to do is prepare shish kebab or chicken for it and enjoy!

Recipes for Georgian sauces are a fantasy of juicy vegetables and fruits, seasoned with herbs and spices!

To paraphrase a well-known expression, I will ask: “Do you love Georgian cuisine as much as I love it?” I really like the food traditions in this blessed country. Meat, fish, vegetables, bread, a lot of vegetables and herbs - what you need for health and longevity. Dishes are prepared with wise simplicity, nothing superfluous. And, of course, many dishes are served with various sauces, which add a wonderful taste to salads, meat and fish.

Today I will prepare the traditional Georgian sauce Bazhe based on walnuts. Bazhe is served with chicken, meat, baked vegetables, and also simply with bread or flatbread.

Usually Imeretian saffron is put in this sauce, but, unfortunately, I didn’t prepare it... Imeretian saffron is crushed dried marigold flowers. Marigolds are quite common flowers, so if you are interested, you can prepare this spice in the summer.

To prepare the Bazhe sauce, I will use ordinary saffron - dried crocus stigmas. This is what a crocus looks like.

But we digress, let's get started making the delicious Georgian Bazhe sauce. These are the ingredients we need.

Let's prepare saffron, coriander (you can use ground) and garlic - we will finely chop it or grate it, this will make it easier to grind the mixture.

Place the ingredients in a mortar and add a little salt.

Finely chop the green cilantro and take hot pepper to taste.

We will try to grind the ingredients in a mortar; if we cannot grind until smooth, we will additionally pass them through a meat grinder.

And now the most fascinating moment begins - we will gradually add boiled chilled water to our mixture (you can use chicken broth).

And grind it, mix the water into our sauce. And again add a little water.

I admit, at that moment I was imagining how a Georgian housewife was preparing Bazhe for her men, who would soon go to work. We can say that love and care are important components of this wonderful sauce. The consistency of Bazhe sauce should be like liquid sour cream, something like this. If you rub it with a spoon, a small mark remains for a few seconds. But you can vary the thickness, you can make Bazhe more liquid.

Bazhe sauce with walnuts goes great with meat, poultry, fish, and vegetables. Today I have a chicken chop, the sauce gave the dish a unique aroma and taste!

Bazhe sauce will allow you to diversify your Lenten menu. Georgian housewives know a lot about sauces! Adding sauce to various vegetable dishes will not only enrich their taste, but also give you strength for the whole day, because nuts are very high in calories. Help yourself!

"Bazhe" sauce is a classic seasoning of Georgian cuisine, which is used with many main dishes. For example, it tastes great with poultry, fish and even vegetables. The most popular version of this sauce is with the addition of peeled walnut kernels.

How to make the taste of a dish unique?

If you want your guests and relatives to remember your dish for a long time, use Bazhe sauce. This is a classic oriental delicacy. It is versatile and very easy to prepare. The process will not take much of your time and effort. Any Georgian housewife can easily prepare Bazhe sauce. But almost every woman has her own secrets that make this liquid seasoning served with the main dish unique and original. We will look at the classic recipe.

Main Ingredients

So, in order to prepare the Bazhe sauce, we do not need many products. Most of them are always at hand for every housewife. First of all, these are walnuts. To make the sauce rich, take one and a half glasses, no less. In addition, we will need garlic; almost no Georgian dish, much less a seasoning, can do without it. You will need to take either three large cloves or 6-8 small ones. It is also necessary to boil water in advance - 400 grams (two glasses). We also cannot do without half a lemon. If desired, you can replace it with 3-4 tablespoons of white wine vinegar. And finally, we will need salt to taste.

Cooking process

Let's start with nuts. To make a delicious Bazhe sauce, the recipe suggests grinding them thoroughly. Don’t be lazy - choose the best, most selective kernels. After all, the final taste of the seasoning largely depends on their quality. You can grind nuts in any way. In the old days this was done in a mortar, in Soviet times - in a meat grinder. In the latter case, the nuts need to be ground twice. Today there are special mills that make this task much easier.

Afterwards, put the already ground nuts into a blender. His task is to mix all the ingredients thoroughly. Add salt, pre-crushed garlic, and add boiled water. Make sure that the Bazhe sauce with walnuts does not turn out too liquid. It’s best not to add all the water at once, but add it gradually.

Now whisk everything thoroughly. According to your desire and taste, you can add various Georgian spices and seasonings to the sauce. Saffron, pepper, hops will do. In a word, feel free to put everything you love. Pour the resulting mixture into a separate bowl and squeeze half a lemon into it or add vinegar, as you prefer. Afterwards we filter all the resulting juice. Ultimately, your sauce should be no thicker than kefir. Otherwise, it can be diluted with the remaining boiled water. Now mix everything with a regular tablespoon and serve.

By the way, Georgians themselves do not recommend using the sauce with meat. But there are gourmets who have a different point of view. In its classic form, “Bazhe” is served with chicken, often boiled or fried. In restaurants they put it directly into the sauce. The delicacy with fish, zucchini, cauliflower and eggplant is also well savored. Many people like to dip bread or flatbreads in it.

Bon appetit, successful culinary experiments in the kitchen!